1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a control method therefor, and a computer-readable storage medium storing a control program for implementing the method, and in particular to a printing system for use in printing a file attached to an electronic mail (e-mail).
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as an example of methods to perform printing using printing apparatuses (also referred to as printers) from terminal equipment, there has been a method that installs printer drivers, which are special software supporting the respective printing apparatuses, on terminal equipment, and sends print data to the printing apparatuses using the printer drivers. Also, as an example of methods to perform printing without using printer drivers, there has been a method that uses e-mail software provided in terminal equipment, attaches a file desired to be printed to an e-mail, and sends the e-mail to a printing apparatus (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-220606). The latter method is particularly useful when it is used for mobile terminal equipment or the like on which it is difficult to install a printer driver.
According to the method described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-220606, an e-mail address is assigned to a printer in advance, a file to be printed is attached to an e-mail for which the e-mail address is designated as a destination, the e-mail with the file attached thereto is sent, and the printer performs printing according to the attached file.
Specifically, at the time of initialization, the printer requests an e-mail address from a server apparatus (hereafter referred to merely as the server), and a unique e-mail address is assigned to the printer from the server. A user sends, from mobile terminal equipment, an e-mail with a file desired to be printed attached thereto to the e-mail address assigned to the printer.
A table in which printers and e-mail addresses are associated with each other is recorded is held in the server, and upon receiving an e-mail, the server refers to the table to identify a printer to which the received e-mail should be sent.
Namely, the printer described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-220606 has to be equipped with a function of requesting an e-mail address from the server. Further, the printer described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-220606 has to be equipped with a table and a function of referring to the table and sending an e-mail to the printer.
As described, according to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-220606, the printers have to be equipped with at least a function of requesting an e-mail address from the server. Moreover, the server has to be equipped with at least a function of managing a table in which e-mail addresses and the printers are associated with each other.
Thus, there has conventionally been the problem that when printing a file attached to an e-mail, it is necessary to equip a printer and a server with special functions, and when printing a file attached to an e-mail, it is impossible to use an existing printer.